Come on, BOULDER, COLORADO cannot be beaten! why do you think the IMBA are based there, along with a load of pro race teams! I can ride 28 miles of singletrack from town alone! 300 days of sunshine and its a 'real' city to boot....

Anyroadup - forget Scotchland. It's rainy and cold. It gets dark early in the winter, there's no culture unless you like banging heads together after an old firm match. The roads are full of potholes. There's no bridleays. Life expectancy is crap and it's full of spongers living off the generosity of their southern neighbours.

1. Has got actual mountains.
2. At midsummer it's still light enough to ride at midnight
3. In winter we get short days, but more chance of snow and ice, which is mega fun. Apparently, illuminating devices are now commonly available.
4. You will be in the spiritual centre of the country. More distilleries than you can poke a stick at.
5. Did I mention we have actual mountains and hardly anyone on them?

Don't move down here in the SW unless you can drive a tractor, milk a goat, indentify a cow(believe me some city people can't, i've seen it)

If you can do all those and do move to the SW take note...we move at a very slow pace, if you expect things to happen at a click of finger, it probably won't,

Do not bring city talk with you (pirate speech only)

When in villages, do speak to everyone you meet, if there's and old lady leaning on the front gate and you start a conversation, there's a good chance you be offered in for a cake and a nice cup of tea,

Don't bitch and moan about cows and cow poo (if you know what one looks like) on the roads, it's quite normal and it means milk will be available for you from the shops (milk comes from cows)

Wellington, NZ - sort of. OK its culture but not as you know it, good restaurants and lovely lovely lovely singletrack and lots of it. And hills, loads of those b astards as well. But no ice rink - we were discussing this last night, i think theres one in Dunedin. Anyhoo, nice place, good weather sometimes and realyl not very many people.
Or Edinburgh.

Come on, BOULDER, COLORADO cannot be beaten! why do you think the IMBA are based there, along with a load of pro race teams! I can ride 28 miles of singletrack from town alone! 300 days of sunshine and its a 'real' city to boot....

I've been to Boulder.

It's not a "real" city.

And my biking needs are likely to be different from "a load of pro race teams!".

But it's a nice enough wander up to the "natural ampitheatre" where U2 rocked out.

Do you ? I didn't know that ! The only place we could decide there was an ice rink was Dunners although i vaguely thought there was one in central otago somewhere as well ? Anyway no we don't have one but we have the water whirler so there

I have to say that if it is in the UK then Inverness would be a great place to live. Aviemore 20mins, Golspie 40mins, Glasgow / Edinburgh 2hrs and all the natural riding you could ever want. Also, looking at the number of trail centres (if that's your bag) then you've got Laggan, Golspie, Balblair, Learnie and that dodgy shore one down loch ness and another one on loch ness I can't remember all within 40mins. For culture, well I don't know that much about that apart from bands and loads of descent bands play inverness. In fact recently I was out in inverness and I was surprised how many of the pubs had really good live bands playing. Oh yeah and what we don't tell you lot down sauf is that it's one of the driest places in the country...

Sheffield's the other choice but that'd be for climbing and it's miles from any snow or sea.

If it's not in the UK then out of all the places I've been it'd have to be here in the Basque Country. Loads of culture with San Sebastion, Bilbao and Biarritz next door and there's loads of mountais rising straight from the surf like this:
I live by the beach and from my house I've got the choice of 2 mountains over 1000m's and half a dozen of about 600m's without getting in the car. You don't get the unbroken sun of the south but the climate's good for me. Oh yeah and the Basque girls are hot! (Have to say that!!)

I'll second the Basque country, not just for the mountain biking, the road riding is damn good too, loads of quiet back roads that go thru lovely villages with spectacular views. I moved here partly for the mountain biking but half my riding is on the road now.

What were the odds of two people in the basque country posting consecutively?

Hey Mark! We've still never met up for that ride! Did you get the granizo last night? Mental here, about the size of golf balls and they've broken some tiles on the roof and smashed the neighbours outside table!

prehaps not the biggest cities in the world but nestled between big hills, or mountains if you will, and generally very pretty. FM4 radio is top notch and a very good reason for living in austria (half german, half english and proper tunes - not like normal germanic radio). big hearty food. snow in winter, 35 degrees in summer.

proper transport links. buses run on time and are scheduled to meet up with arriving trains.